In his 2018 book, Heavy: An American Memoir, Kiese Laymon recounts his own experience with the weight of life: his physical weight, the weight of his emotional/spiritual being, and the weight of the communities of which he is a part.

While he was widely known for his novels, James Baldwin’s corpus also includes essays and plays that have become foundational for many in the United States and beyond. If you, too, are interested in the brilliance of James Baldwin, here are some places to start reading: